Authenticity examination of the inscription on the ossuary attributed to James, brother of Jesus

Abstract A First Century CE ossuary belonging to a private collector, bearing engraved Aramaic inscription ''Ya'akov bar Yosef achui de Yeshua'' (James son of Joseph his brother of Jesus), has been attributed to James, Jesus' brother, first head of the Jerusalem church. The ossuary was reportedly found around Jerusalem. Previous examination suggested that the ossuary and the inscription were genuine. Our research focuses on the authenticity of the patina that covers the inscription (''letters patina''), based on its petrography and oxygen isotopic composition (d O). We compared the d 18 O values of the letters patina from the James Ossuary, with the patina sampled from the uninscribed surfaces of the same item (''surface patina''), and with surface and letters patinas from legally excavated ossuaries from Jerusalem. In addition, the results were compared with d 18 O values of carbonates formed naturally from groundwater in the Judean Mountains. Our results show that the petrography and the d 18 O values of the letters patina of the James Ossuary differ significantly from the other patinas. The oxygen isotopic composition of the letters patina could not have formed under natural temperature and water oxygen isotope composition that prevailed in Judea during the last 3000 years. The patina was most likely artificially formed from powdered chalk immersed in hot water. These observations clearly call into question the authenticity of the inscription on ''James Ossuary''

Conservation Science and Ethics in the Analytical Studies of Clay Cuneiform Tablets from Ancient Near Eastern Archives

The Late Bronze Age (ca. 1500-1200 BC) constitutes the heyday of the great empires of the ancient Near East (ANE), such as Egypt, Hatti, Mitanni, Babylonia, and Assyria. Centuries of conflicts followed by peaceful relations, marked the interrelations of these superpowers. Rich literary records in the form of archives of cuneiform texts were established. These archives contain abundant tablets whose origin is unknown. Sometimes the letterhead is missing, in other cases, we may have the name of the sender and still ignore his domicile. Further, the location of many ANE countries and cities has not yet been clearly established. Hence, revealing the origin of documents has the potential of shedding new light on the history of the ANE and beyond. The paper will discuss the use of a rich array of nondestructive testing (NDT) and minimally-destructive testing (MDT) methods for studying the composition, technology and provenance of ANE cuneiform tablets. This approach opens new horizons in the interpretation of the clay documents. We applied such analyses on hundreds of tablets from el Amarna, Ras Shamra/Ugarit, Boğazköy/Hattusha, and sites in Cyprus and Israel/Palestine. The research project made during the last decade, serves as the basis for this study. The results raise a set of ethical and practical issues concerning the study and conservation of such precious artifacts

Petrographic Characteristics of several key Southern Levantine Ceramic Materials

This paper aims to characterise and provenance a number of common ceramic types from the Southern Levantine region

Stations of the Chalcolithic Period in Nahal Sekher, Northern Negev

This article describes small stations of the Chalcolithic period from the Nahal Sekher area, South of Ramat Hovav. This part of Nahal Sekher is covered by sands and is therefore greener than its surroundings. The stations consist of small ash-pits with few fragments of Chalcolithic pottery — bowls, jars and cornets — and flint artifacts. The stations are interpreted as encampments of herders coming from larger sites to exploit the greener pastures of the sandy area.Description de petits gisements d'époque chalcolithique dans la région de Nahal Sekher au sud de Ramat Hovav. Cette zone est recouverte par les sables et de ce fait plus verdoyante que les alentours. Les stations consistent en de petites fosses cendreuses associées à de la poterie chalcolithique (bols, jarres, cornets) et à des outils en silex. Les stations sont interprétées comme des campements de pasteurs venant de centres plus importants pour exploiter les pâturages de la zone sableuse.Gilead I., Goren Yuval. Stations of the Chalcolithic Period in Nahal Sekher, Northern Negev. In: Paléorient, 1986, vol. 12, n°1. pp. 83-90

Shedding New Light on the Pure Copper Metallurgy of the Chalcolithic Southern Levant Through an Archaeological Experiment

This study focuses on the results of the pure copper technology. In the area, it was almost exclusively employed to cast in open moulds, differentiating it from the lost wax technology which casts polymetallic ores

Rekonstruktion zur chalkolithischen Metallurgie in der südlichen Levante (4200–3800 v. Chr.) / Reconstructing the Metallurgy of the Chalcolithic Southern Levant (4200-3800 BCE)

Hat das Wachsausschmelzverfahren der Kupferzeit keine archäologischen Spuren hinterlassen

Ceramic neolithic pottery in Cyprus - Origin, technology and possible implications for social structure and identity

This paper presents the results of a petrographic study conducted on a selection of 88 Cypriot Ceramic Neolithic vessels, originating at seven sites which represent various geographic regions on the island. The study is aimed at determining their place of origin and disclosing details about the technology of their production. All the studied vessels are found to be locally made on the island. There are, however, indications that there was restricted movement of ceramic vessels within defined regions in the island. In addition, a clear distinction between coarse ware and painted ware production technologies are also observed, reflecting island-wide shared technological traditions. However, even within these seemingly uniform technological traditions, regional variations are also observed. These observations support previous interpretations suggesting a division between ‘northern’ and ‘southern’ social groups on the island in the Ceramic Neolithic period

Ensemble Classification With Noisy Real-Valued Base Functions

In data-intensive applications, it is advantageous to perform partial processing close to the data, and communicate intermediate results to a central processor, instead of the data itself. When the communication or computation medium is noisy, the resulting degradation in computation quality at the central processor must be mitigated. We study this problem for the setup of binary classification performed by an ensemble of base functions communicating real-valued confidence levels. We propose a noise-mitigation solution that optimizes the transmission gains and aggregation coefficients of the base functions. Toward that, we formulate a post-training gradient-based optimization algorithm that minimizes the error probability given the training dataset and the noise parameters. We further derive lower and upper bounds on the optimized error probability, and show empirical results that demonstrate the enhanced performance achieved by our approach on real data.11Nsciescopu

Mitigating Noise in Ensemble Classification with Real-Valued Base Functions

In data-intensive applications, it is advantageous to perform some partial processing close to the data, and communicate to a central processor the partial results instead of the data itself. When the communication medium is noisy, one must mitigate the resulting degradation in computation quality. We study this problem for the setup of binary classification performed by an ensemble of functions communicating real-valued confidence levels. We propose a noise-mitigation solution that works by optimizing the aggregation coefficients at the central processor. Toward that, we formulate a post-training gradient algorithm that minimizes the error probability given the dataset and the noise parameters. We further derive lower and upper bounds on the optimized error probability, and show empirical results that demonstrate the enhanced performance achieved by our scheme on real data. © 2022 IEEE